When asked his name at the beginning of his interview, residential school survivor Mark Atleo chooses to answer first in Nuu-chah-Nulth, the traditional language of the Ahousaht First Nation. “Kiikitakashuaa,” he says – his name in Nuu-chah-Nulth – before moving on to introduce himself in English.
His resolve to speaking first in Nuu-chah-Nulth could almost be mistaken as an act of defiance, a firm and meaningful gesture to his past, as when Atleo was seven years old, he was taken from his family and placed in the Alberni Indian Residential School (AIRS). Here he was forbidden from speaking his first language and forced to learn English.
“I felt lost,” said the 72-year-old Atleo, who remembers fighting back, unsuccessfully, against the colonial language. “I didn't know why we had to speak English."
Atleo arrived at the school with his six-year-old brother – the two of them thought they were going on a road trip with their parents to Port Alberni. Unbeknownst to the pair, threatened with jail by the Canadian government, their parents were forced to take them to AIRS.
Atleo remembers being dropped off at the school with his brother, small suitcases in hand, their mother crying, watching them from the taxi.
“And my dad, he wouldn’t say goodbye,” recalls Atleo. “He couldn't say it. We were just left there.”
Terrified and confused in the first few days, the two boys consoled each other – Atleo stepping up as the older brother to protect his sibling who had never been away from home before.
But their comfort was short-lived. To stop them from communicating in the Nuu-chah-Nulth language, Atleo and his brother were placed in separate dormitories.
There were also physical punishments for them and anyone caught breaking the strict rule.
“That’s when they give us a strap and they said, ‘We're going to keep doing it until you stop speaking your language.’ [It] happened so many times.”
Atleo describes being strapped with a piece of leather across his hand, the force of it causing his hand to swell and turn red. “And it even hurt more with a wooden ruler,” he adds.
Being forced into silence was a common experience for Atleo and his friends at the residential school. Victims of physical, verbal and sexual abuse at the hands of staff at the school, the children were warned to stay quiet.
He tearfully remembers being sexually abused by one male supervisor, and witnessing it happening to many others.
“We couldn't talk about it,” said Atleo. “We couldn’t communicate with anybody about it. And it was [a] frightening experience all the time when somebody comes in the room and taps you on the shoulder. That's when you had to go – go to the man's room. That was the hardest part.”
The children were silenced again when they discovered a grave whilst playing in an out-of-bounds area on the school grounds. After telling a supervisor about the grave, they were strapped and told not to talk about it. But the group wouldn’t let it rest, remembers Atleo.
“We thought we were going to be brave and we told the principal,” he said. “[But] we got in trouble again, strapped again.”
When the news broke in May 2021 about the discovery of the suspected grave sites of 215 children on the site of a former Indigenous residential school in Kamloops, Atleo says he cried. Memories of being physically punished, forcing him to stay silent about the grave he and his friends found at AIRS, came flooding back.
“I just said, wow, it's about time somebody told the story. And I said the truth hurts – and it did hurt. Somebody told a story we couldn't tell.”
Finding his voice
Wanting to break free from the confines of the school and communicate freely, Atleo found solace in extra-curricular activities such as sport. Playing soccer became a frequent relief, as it took him and his friends away from the grounds of the school.
He smiles when he talks about how his team won an Island soccer championship, but the soft-spoken Atleo is modest about his skills on the pitch. “I don't know if I was good, but we won.”
Art classes were also an escape for Atleo, offering him another safe place for him to express himself through painting, without restrictions. But until 2013, Atleo’s memories of these classes were locked away, deep inside his mind.
He had no recollection of painting as a child.
In 2008, a collection of paintings by students from residential and day schools were gifted to UVic by the family of Port Alberni artist Robert Aller, who volunteered as an art teacher. Among them was a painting by Atleo.
“I denied that,” he says. “Never painted in my life, I don't know anything about [a] painting – that was blocked out.”
He was reunited with his painting on stage at a Truth and Reconciliation Commission event in Vancouver, in front of over 1,000 witnesses. On stage, Atleo says he experienced flashbacks to his time at AIRS; memories of the abuse he and his friends suffered, but also fond memories of his time in the classroom with art teacher Aller, who he describes as kind and trustworthy.
“Holy cow,” said Atleo about the moment he saw his painting. “It was a real relief to see it when I saw it.”
A bright blue sockeye salmon, with yellow and green markings, can be seen in Atleo’s painting. The fish rests in a net, surrounded by a swirling blue and purple sea. Atleo remembers his teacher had asked him to paint something he loves – he only had one answer: fishing.
“So I put that fish in there, and the net part [is] of my teachings … from my grandfather, like a circle of life. When my grandfather was teaching me all our cultural teachings, lots of it is integrated with everything around the world, around our lands, who we are.”
The painting tells the story of a young child who had big dreams to be a fisherman, explains Atleo, which is what life was like before he was taken to residential school.
From an early age, Atleo enjoyed fishing. He remembers playing in the rock piles near his home, competing with friends to see who could catch the most fish, letting them go after deciding on a winner.
When he told his father about his dream to be a fisherman, a young Atleo was told he would first have to learn how to tie knots before stepping foot onboard a boat.
“So I went to my grandpa, he taught me how to tie knots and my uncles helped me,” said Atleo, whose face lights up whenever the topic moves to fishing. “And when my grandpa saw what I could do … as a young kid, he told my dad he has to take me out now and that's when I went out.”
Atleo would go on to be a successful fisherman for 36 years. “I did follow my dreams. My grandpa said, ‘Follow your dreams,’ and I did.”
Alongside Atleo, dozens of residential school survivors and their families have been repatriated with long-forgotten paintings.
“It brought us back to who we were … where we come from, what we did." said Atleo. "All the paintings had stories to them and they still have stories to them when they do work on it.”
Many of the paintings are now part of a program of education offered through the AIRS Survivors Art and Education Society, which aims to shine a spotlight on the experiences of residential school children through the recovered artwork.
"It tells who you really were at one point in life as a young person – and [the paintings] try to get them to see what we went through and what we lost," explains Atleo. "Like I always say, I lost nine years of my life being in that school and there were other people that were there even longer.”
Through sharing his story, Atleo says it has helped him to feel like he is not alone, but also, it has helped others to reach out for help – a difficult step for many.
"When the people need help, they’re afraid to ask for help," he says. "And they weren't expecting me to tell them things like I shared. I tell them I had to reach out when I needed it ... they'll know their point in life when they need help, and they'll realize, not to be afraid, not to be ashamed.”
Breaking point
And Atleo understands how difficult it can be to ask for help. It was something he struggled with after he left residential school.
After nine years at AIRS, he moved to Victoria to continue his education in Oak Bay. Whilst relieved to have escaped the nightmares of the residential school, Atleo went on to experience racism in his junior and senior years at high school.
At the age of 16, he turned to alcohol. “Every time I got triggered, that's what I did. I go get my liquor … just to kill the pain, not talk about it to anybody. Not share. And I did that for many, many years until I got my help.”
Conditioned by years of being told to stay quiet, not speak, be silent, Atleo suppressed his feelings, unable to tell his family about his experiences, and later in life, his wife and their two children.
When his marriage began to break down, Atleo says he thought about ending his life several times. It was only then he reached out for help, calling on the support of a good friend, who was a psychologist.
“[I] was terrified,” says Atleo about the turning point in his life, roughly 36 years ago. “And it took me a long time asking … I just said, I need you … I need help, I said. And I cried.”
With the support of his psychologist, doctors, First Nations health nurses, and his friends and family, Atleo learned how to speak up and share his experiences.
Shocked and upset by the horrors of their father’s residential school past, Atleo says his son and daughter are happy he is now sharing his story and helping others, but ultimately helping himself.
“It's really helpful for me,” he says about his work with AIRS Survivors Art and Education Society, which connects him with organizations and schools around Victoria. “I don't know what I'd do without sharing, you know, because I'm always busy.”
And despite being a retired 72-year-old, who jokingly prefers to tell people that he is 49, Atleo is determined to stay busy. He volunteers at the Victoria Native Friendship Centre, and offers his time in an advisory role to the family and children services department in Esquimalt.
He has also returned to school, studying to achieve a certificate in mental health and addictions at Camosun College, which he will use to help people in need in the community.
“I just like everyone to be kind to themselves and not to be judgmental," says Atleo when asked for a message he would like to share with the community. "You know, we're all the same. We have a phrase that we say: Heshook-ish Tsawalk – we are one. That’s one of the phrases we like to share.
“We're all the same people.”
